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Cleanup. Image via Wikipedia

For a good rundown of Thursday's release of findings by the presidential panel that investigated the causes of BP's Deepwater Horizon disaster, check out this piece or this one. In short, not enough risk assessment by BP, not enough quality control and supervision by Halliburton, not enough training by Transocean.

But what does all of this mean to BP? The oil analysts at Credit Suisse, in a report Thursday night, point out that although the commission's report was scathing in their criticism of BP, the good news is that it seems less likely that BP could be found grossly negligent in causing the disaster.

This is because the BP managers on shore were not made aware of the problems that the drilling crew was facing. Thus, they were not in position to willfully disregard those problems or consciously decline to offer solutions to them. The report says that had the on-shore experts been involved in the problem, they very likely would have offered immediate advice or stopped work until the situation was better understood.

Yes it's bad that the managers in charge of the project didn't know what was going on, but that ignorance absolves those managers of gross negligence, and as such insulates the entire company.

This matters because, as explained in this previous post, the difference between a court finding of negligence versus gross negligence could be the difference between $18 billion and $40 billion in fines under the Clean Water Act.

But what's good for BP would be bad for partner Anadarko Petroleum, which owns a 25% stake in the Macondo well, but has so far refused to pay its share of cleanup costs, insisting that BP was grossly negligent and thus responsible for the whole thing. Anadarko could ultimately be on the hook for $10 billion in costs.

The Credit Suisse team is careful however to say that also the commission's findings reduce the likelihood of gross negligence, that's ultimately up to the court to decide--probably this summer.